Politically Insoluble Part 2

There’s a firestorm on the Right: an exchange of words, sometimes bitter, between the generally like-minded. It flows from the pervasive sense of betrayal by Congressional Republicans:

According to an article in the left-wing outlet Politico and reported by Breitbart, Republican House Speaker John Boehner held secret negotiations with Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, leading up to his decision to flip-flop and fund Obama's executive amnesty; including a pre-hashed out deal to use the hoopla around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's March 3, 2015 address to Congress over Iran's nuclear ambitions as political cover to sneak in the extraordinarily controversial vote.

As part of this effort, the former chiefs of staff to House Speaker John Boehner and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, through a group called the American Action Network, spent $400,000 for advertisements aimed at pressuring House conservatives to support Obama's executive amnesty and fund it in its entirety through the end of the fiscal year.

On the same day as Netanyahu's speech, the Republican-led House of Representatives caved to the demands of Democrats and passed a "clean" Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill by 257-167 with a majority of Democratic votes. Seventy-five Republicans voted to pass the clean bill, 167 voted against passage. The measure provides full funding of the DHS through September 30th, the end of the federal fiscal year, leaving Obama's executive amnesty untouched. In essence, the seventy-five Republicans, who joined all House Democrats to fund Obama's executive amnesty, aided and abetted the shredding of the Constitution by giving Obama the funding and future permission to rewrite federal law as he sees fit.

Rewarding his cooperation, the Democrats have vowed to protect Boehner from any challenges to his leadership by conservative elements of the Republican Party.

Parts of the above are unconfirmed by objective evidence...but none of it is implausible.

I’ve given you my assessment of where that leaves us politically. Add to it my colleague Dystopic’s poignant yet penetrating analysis:

America is an Empire. It crossed the Rubicon to Imperialism, not in the manner of the “colonialist oppressor” Social Justice Warriors are so fond of repeating as a mantra, but in the manner of centralized Executive Power. We have a Julius Caesar in office, though mind you without any of that man’s martial talent or wisdom. He is a tyrant, but an ineffective one, which is all the more infuriating....

America is the most laughable Empire to have ever borne the title. Her armies are in retreat all across the globe, leaving organizations like ISIS, far worse than garden-variety dictators like Saddam Hussein, in their wake. Militant Islam has never been stronger, ideologically, than it is today, excepting perhaps the days in which it overran the dying Roman Empire in the 600s. Competent military men have been removed from their posts, and feminist equality given a priority greater than that of combat readiness. The greatest military machine to have ever existed is repeatedly dealt terrible blows, not from the enemy, but from purported friends....

Imperial America is dying. Her education system is rife with Progressives and historical social justice revisionism. Her universities are staffed by lunatics, priced to the point of debt-slavery, and set as the prerequisite for getting any job that doesn’t involve retail or flipping burgers (and, even then, sometimes the sheepskin is needed). Enslave yourself to make a living doing nothing at all. Meanwhile mass Media spouts lies by the boatload and politicians don’t even bother to hide their disgust for the hoi polloi any longer. There is no reasoning with them, no middle-ground possible, no compromise with those who do not want us to exist.

Take a moment to digest that. Can you see any way to refute it? I can’t. Neither can any of those who remain optimistic that political methods – “ballots, not bullets” – can restore our Constitutional health. The best they can do is to say that “we shouldn’t give up hope.”

Nor can I refute Dystopic’s prediction for what follows from here:

Imperial America will die. Regardless of whether or not we wish it, human nature demands it, and nothing can stand in the way of that. The only question is what shall rise from her ashes.

A great way to start the morning, eh?

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If we were to leap to the conclusion that open insurrection is the way forward, we would face the following questions:

1. “Who bells the cat?” Who would undertake to organize and lead an insurrection against the federal government?
2. The regime still commands the most powerful military on Earth and would surely use it in its own defense...assuming, of course, that America’s men at arms would be willing to fire on American citizens. While it’s pretty to imagine that the military would side with the insurrectionists, that development is not guaranteed by any means.
3. How would other nations react to an insurrection in the United States? The nation does have external as well as internal enemies. Civil disorder here would embolden some of them to take steps we would not approve of.
4. What chance of prevailing would the pro-Constitutional forces have? Few would willingly enlist in such an uprising were the outlook less than favorable. “Victor’s justice” is seldom merciful toward the victor’s enemies.

Many a totalitarian regime has come and gone over the millennia, but few have been replaced by a better, more freedom-oriented regime after a violent insurrection. Rather, as Bertrand Russell wrote:

Those who have seized power, even for the noblest of motives, soon persuade themselves that there are good reasons for not relinquishing it. This is particularly likely to happen if they believe themselves to represent some immensely important cause. They will feel that their opponents are ignorant and perverse; before long they will come to hate them...The important thing is to keep their power, not to use it as a means to an eventual paradise. And so what were means become ends, and the original ends are forgotten except on Sundays.

This makes it plain that we ought to spend some time contemplating alternative courses.

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It seems inevitable that a collectivity – in this case, a State – must be opposed by an opposite collectivity – e.g., a rebel army. Yet this need not necessarily be so. Indeed, it might well be that locking ourselves into a force-on-force mindset, wherein two organized armies would meet in open warfare, would predetermine our defeat.

Not long ago, I wrote:

The political class and its hangers-on fear exactly the same things as the victimists: being ignored. Were they to become aware that no one is paying any attention to their enactments and decrees, they would soon slink away. Some might even enter productive trades, perhaps as cheap prostitutes.

They haven’t done any such thing because we continue to pay attention to them, and for no other reason. They do have their tools: the media, the many interest groups they support and encourage, political favors to the amoral and weak-minded, and of course a considerable amount of potential force. But none of these things are irresistible. Indeed, they pale in comparison to the force available to the citizenry.

He who yearns for a return to freedom cannot repose his hopes in the State, in politics, or in any imaginable “movement.” He must simply say to himself, “I am free; I shall do as I please,” and sincerely resolve to endure the consequences. There is no other avenue; all other roads are “roads to Mishnory.” While we remain on it, we’re inexorably fated, not to “go through all these things twice,” but to go through them over and over ad infinitam.

This is not a brief for political anarchism, as intellectually attractive as that is. It’s an exhortation to applied practical anarchism, perhaps alternately phrased as individualist anarchism: your personal refusal to grant the State unmerited attention or respect. That includes ignoring statist dictates that have no moral basis. (You might already be doing exactly that on subjects near and dear to your heart.)

This strikes me as the most promising approach.

A nation the size of the United States cannot be policed comprehensively or effectively from a central seat of power. The enforcement power required for that undertaking does not exist. That’s a great part of the reason Washington has strained to seduce state and local law enforcement organizations with military equipment: the mandarins of the federal government know they can’t impose their will on all of us without cooperation from coercive forces in every state, county, city, village, and hamlet.

Consider as an example the states whose governments have passed oppressive firearms laws. Those governments have become aware that they lack the power required to enforce those laws. No, they haven’t backed away from them yet, but the day will surely come. Even power-worshippers are aware that unless 98% or more of a populace agrees with a law and conforms to it voluntarily, the law is unenforceable. Should some myrmidon try to enforce such a law, he could find himself staring down the barrels of his target’s neighbors’ “prohibited” firearms.

Faced with that sort of resistance that resists openly only when poked, the Washington regime would be impotent. Unless it were willing to threaten to use weapons of mass destruction internally, it would have no counter to such defiance of its wishes.

However, it falls to us to produce that sort of locally organized, self-defending resistance. Though there are pockets in which it already exists, the mindset required is far from being universal.

The first step is waking Americans from the dream of salvation by politics.

More anon.

I hem likink zis vooman.

Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief, told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month that Mrs. Clinton “tweets about women’s rights in this country and takes money from governments that deny women the most basic human rights.”^[1]

Ms. Fiorina did more on one day as CEO of HP than Hillary "What Difference Does it Make?" Clinton did in her professional career. Ok, that's a slight exaggeration. Make that a week as CEO of HP.

Notes
^[1] "Glaciers at the NYT: The Democrats’ War on Women and Blacks." By Roger L Simon, PJ Media, 3/8/15.

All you need to know about Pinochet.

Commenter Harry Bear:

The question is not between Pinochet or Switzerland. Far from it, it was either Allende's version of Castroism (while you [Javier Antonio] lived there, do you remember Castro's month long visit to Chile in December 1971?) or the Junta. And the Junta evolved into a democracy, leaving Chile the most prosperous country in South America.

Pinochet left the presidency voluntarily 34 years ago and Chile is now a prosperous democracy. Castro and his allies are holding on to the bitter end and have no intention of having Cuba be anything but a communist dictatorship where there is little economic inequality but widespread poverty (outside of the wealthy, privileged, communist nomenklatura). Shared poverty, that is. Equally shared poverty. Quite unnecessary poverty.

Harry Bear again:

Note that Salvador Allende first ran for President in 1964 and lost with 39% of the vote. Six years later he 'won' with 37% of the vote. The NYT piece goes on to quote de la Parra to the effect that 'sloganeering extremists' of the early 70's 'proclaimed "Death and vengeance: Utopia is within reach!"'. That that was when minority viewpoints began to be disrespected, instead were to be crushed. I.e., the Allendeans wanted to destroy Chilean democracy. That's the context of the Pinochet coup.

Utopia, it seems, is preceded by death and vengeance.

Then this from EstanislasDeloserrata (a great example, along with Mr. Bear, of how to argue dispassionately with leftists determined to distort the facts) who provides additional clarity on Pinochet and his allies:

Harry, never try to argue sensibly with a MIRista.

For them the [leftist] UP and Allende were perfect in every way, and the Marxist gangs that ranged the countryside were completely angelic. Those who had their homes, farms, diaries, and other businesses taken over by the MIRista hoodlums, of course they were richly compensated and happy with the deal. The bankruptcy of the country was all an invention. The Cuban weapons being smuggled to the MIRistas before the golpe [blow] (and afterward as well), those were just toys. The majority vote of the Chilean legislature to remove Allende, of course that never happened either.

Notes
All quotes from "Was Augusto Pinochet a Villain or Hero for Chile? Legacy of 1973-1990 Military Ruler Torn between Market Reforms, Human-Rights Abuses." A debate between Luis Eduardo Barrueto and Carlos Sabino. PanAm Post, 2/24/15.

Adventures In Joinerism

There are so many pernicious things about “being a joiner” – i.e., identifying yourself, and therefore your convictions and interests, with some organization – that I could write about it for a whole year and not exhaust the subject. However, as most of my Gentle Readers come here for the gut-punches and bile geysers, today I’ll confine myself to a brief survey of currently important examples.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t be back to the subject tomorrow.

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Back at the late, lamented Eternity Road, I once wrote about a discipline I called “identity management:” the sometimes fine, more often crude, and always strenuous art of managing what others know or believe about you. Joinerism compounds the problems in this domain, as one’s perceived identity is too easily conflated with the public posture of your group...even worse, with the positions and behavior of your group’s most flamboyant or erratic members.

Identity management is particularly important to politicians bidding for elective office. The democratic and quasi-democratic processes America uses to choose elected officials can make a number supreme above all other truths. That number, of course, is “50% plus 1.” In a political environment as complex and deeply riven as ours, taking a chance on the sentiments of even a relatively small group that exhibits bloc-voting behavior can mean risking electoral defeat.

If you identify yourself as “a Republican,” just now you have some serious identity-management problems, owing to the behavior of the Republicans most conspicuous in national politics. That includes those contemplating a bid for the presidency, a few of the more prominent governors, and several who appear destined to live and die on Capitol Hill.

(Yes, yes, if you identify as “a Democrat,” you’re even worse off, but let’s not go there for the moment. At any rate, if any self-nominated Democrats read Liberty’s Torch, I doubt they regard it as a source of wisdom.)

Consider: The Republican Party’s platform position is that the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which struck down every anti-abortion law in every state (“An exercise of raw judicial power” – Associate Justice Byron White in dissent), is an overextension of the Court’s authority – in essence, a violation of the Tenth Amendment. But the pro-abortion forces, which can’t abide any abridgement of the “right” to murder an unborn child, aren’t willing to let any Republican recur to the platform and stop there. Their press henchmen persist in pressing prominent Republicans, especially those vying for the Oval Office, with questions intended to “trap” their target into alienating some portion of his support. For example: “Governor, you’ve said you’re pro-life. Does that mean you’d favor punishing a woman who chooses to abort because she was made pregnant by rape or incest?”

Consider also: Some fringy types have espoused elaborate conspiracy theories about forces half-in, half-out of public view that secretly control the world economy. The fringiest among them, particularly the ones who focus on the multinational banks, compound the damage by focusing on Jews in the financial industries. (Inasmuch as moneylending is one of the few trades that European Jews were allowed to practice during medieval times, this is both ironic and unjust.) That some such persons call themselves Republicans allows the Left to imply that other Republicans accept such representations. For example: “Senator, your father the former Congressman has said that he regards the banking industry as a secret Jewish cabal whose aim is the control of the world economy. What do you have to say to that?”

Consider as well: Certain “controversial” subjects are so tightly enclosed by “politically correct” positions that to dissent from them can sound as if one has rejected heliocentrism. Even a hint that one believes that discussion of the matter should continue can result in being tarred as something seemingly vile by a particularly militant special-interest group. The consequence of sharing a group membership with someone braver than yourself – or who has less at risk – is the need to choose between defending his position and distancing yourself from it. For example: “Governor, your fellow Republican Candidate X has said that he believes that homosexuality isn’t an inborn characteristic but a choice. What do you have to say to that?”

Those are the cases I can produce with only five seconds’ thought. Can you name any others?

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To someone not in politics, wholly uninterested in acquiring the powers and perquisites of public office, such problems may seem unimportant. There’s some justice in dismissing them as pertinent mainly to the politically ambitious, but in our time there’s a considerable hazard as well, for politics and political affiliations have come to permeate every corner of American society.

There are institutions of every sort that seek to bar persons of divergent politics from entry. Companies, universities, clubs, discussion fora, and eleemosynary organizations can all be found that do this. Even some zoning boards have exhibited a tendency to approve or deny permits on the basis of the applicant’s politics. When “your” politics isn’t really “yours,” but consists rather of imputations laid upon you by others with an agenda of their own, the problem reaches its maximum.

Many Americans have experienced separation from their families over political differences. Many can’t abide holiday gatherings because of politics. If political strife can penetrate the family, the nucleus from which all successful societies are built, what could possibly be safe from it?

I’ve written many times, including quite recently, that politics is the pursuit of power over others. Whether some political component is inevitable, even indispensable, is open to question, but this is not:

Politics and joinerism are a single phenomenon.

The hyperpoliticization of American society endangers everything. If my argument here resonates with you, this implication should be just as strong:

To return American society to a stably healthy condition,
Men of good will must begin an explicitly anti-political movement.

Subject after subject must be wrenched loose from the grip of political discourse. Everything not inherently a matter of force or fraud must be removed from that realm:

• Economics: What we make, how we make it, and to whom we sell it.
• Education: what is taught to our children, when, and by whom.
• Medicine: Who practices it, of what it consists, and how we pay for it.
• Charity: Who shall receive succor, in what forms, and from whom.
• Religion and quasi-religious convictions.
• Family life and practices.
• Science and technology.

I could go on, but that’s enough for the present.

The process must start with individuals and their relationships with one another. Over time it must extend all the way to the pinnacle of voluntary organization. It must liberate from political discourse every subject that stands outside the rei publicae: the defense of the realm, the protection of individuals’ lives and property, the safety and cleanliness of the streets, and the peaceful resolution of contractual disputes.

Let’s make “That shouldn’t be a matter for politics” the mantra of the Twenty-First Century.

Repulsive, anti-white TV show courtesy of George Lopez.

White people = saps.

On race, immigration, politics, defense.

World gone mad – Episode 46,554.

The liberal stereotype of the supposedly conservative 1950s entails, among other things, a time of rigidity too brittle to adapt to necessary changes and of an institutional arrogance that expected mindless conformity from a population no longer willing to conform. This actually describes our own time quite well, but not along conservative lines. You will not get dismissed from your job for being or ever having been a member of the Communist Party, but busybodies at tech companies will get you canned for voting against gay marriage.

"Conservatism Is Obsolete." By By Matthew Cochran, The Federalist, 3/9/15 (link omitted).

Lawlessness Among The Law’s Supposed Guardians

Perhaps when Ralph Waldo Emerson said “You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong,” he was being a trifle optimistic. Consider this, for instance:

[G]iven that prosecutors often face no consequences for misconduct, it's not surprising that some are willing to lie about it.

That's what happened in the California case of The People v. Efrain Velasco-Palacios. In the course of negotiating a plea bargain with the defendant, a Kern County prosecutor committed what the California appeals court called "outrageous government misconduct."

What prosecuting attorney Robert Murray did was produce a translated transcript of the defendant's interrogation to which he had added a fraudulent confession. The defense attorney got a copy of the audio tape of the interrogation, but it "ended abruptly." Eventually, Murray admitted to falsifying the transcript, presumably in the hopes of either coercing a plea deal, or ensuring a victory at trial.

When the trial judge found out, charges against the defendant were dismissed. Incredibly, the State of California, via Attorney General Kamala Harris, decided to appeal the case. The state's key argument: That putting a fake confession in the transcript wasn't "outrageous" because it didn't involve physical brutality, like chaining someone to a radiator and beating him with a hose.

Did you know that the California Democrat Party – apparently with the blessing of the National Democrat Party – has “canonized” Kamala Harris as the Golden State’s next United States Senator? Would you say California voters might want to know about the above events before they reach for the levers? I certainly would.

But that’s not the end of this tawdry tale:

Murray suffered no actual punishment for his wrongdoing. As a report in the New York Observer notes: "For reasons beyond comprehension, he still works for the District Attorney Lisa Green in Kern County, Calif." Murray does face the possibility of discipline from the California bar, but even disbarment would be a light punishment for knowingly producing a false document in a criminal proceeding.

Why hasn’t the man been tarred, feathered, and run out of California on a rail? Because no other state would have him?

Can you hear Juvenal whispering Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I can.

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Meanwhile, we have this frightening article from the Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead:

Consider what happened to Nicole Gainey, the Florida mom who was arrested and charged with child neglect for allowing her 7-year-old son to visit a neighborhood playground located a half mile from their house.

For the so-called “crime” of allowing her son to play at the park unsupervised, Gainey was interrogated, arrested and handcuffed in front of her son, and transported to the local jail where she was physically searched, fingerprinted, photographed and held for seven hours and then forced to pay almost $4000 in bond in order to return to her family. Gainey’s family and friends were subsequently questioned by the Dept. of Child Services. Gainey now faces a third-degree criminal felony charge that carries with it a fine of up to $5,000 and 5 years in jail.

For Denise Stewart, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whether or not she had done anything wrong, was sufficient to get her arrested.

The 48-year-old New York grandmother was dragged half-naked out of her apartment and handcuffed after police mistakenly raided her home when responding to a domestic disturbance call. Although it turns out the 911 call came from a different apartment on a different floor, Stewart is still facing charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

And then there are those equally unfortunate individuals who unknowingly break laws they never even knew existed. John Yates is such a person. A commercial fisherman, Yates was sentenced to 30 days in prison and three years of supervised release for throwing back into the water some small fish which did not meet the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s size restrictions. Incredibly, Yates was charged with violating a document shredding provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was intended to prevent another Enron scandal.

I’ve been advised to avoid articles such as that, for the sake of my blood pressure.

Whitehead makes some telling points about the “policing for profit” phenomenon that’s been observed in several locales. He has a valid point about the perniciousness of the incentives, but I hasten to add this: As we’re talking about persons in government jobs – police, prosecutors, judges, and bureaucrats – no financial incentive is required to evoke this kind of behavior. They’re in those positions because they worship power over others above all other things. They like nothing better than to exercise such power. The rightness or wrongness of the occasion might never even reach their conscious minds.

Given that they’re protected from retribution for their misdeeds, in some cases by “sovereign immunity” and in others by chummy relationships with those who have the power to hold them to account, how could we reasonably expect them to resist the temptations they face?

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Perhaps when Emerson wrote that “You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong,” he implicitly assumed that the guardians of the law could be trusted with their powers and responsibilities. I can’t comment on that. However, I know of someone who can:

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against -- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can be neither observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with." [Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]

Lord Acton had it right. Indeed, he might have understated the problem. Now if you’ll kindly excuse me, I think I should lie down for a bit. Have a nice day.

Why is the FCC Grab for the Internet a Bad Thing?

A VERY, VERY, VERY Bad Thing.

Politically Insoluble

There’s a prerequisite for this tirade: go to Sarah Hoyt’s place and read this article. It’s long but worth it: not because I agree with her sentiments, but because without realizing it she’s made the best possible argument for mine.

What sentiments of mine do I mean? Go read Sarah’s piece and come back loaded for bear.

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Sarah points out, quite accurately, that to allow the Left to proceed unhindered (i.e., by abandoning the faithless, spineless Republican Party for its treacheries) would produce unpredictable deterioration, even chaos, and not merely in the U.S. but worldwide; that revolutions are an extremely chancy business; that the rest of the world would not content itself with watching politely while we “let it burn;” that not all of “our” Congressional representatives should be condemned; and that on several fronts we appear to have made notable progress. In refuting the “go third party” advocates she makes, en passant, the point at the foundation of my own convictions:

But let’s suppose by a miracle the country holds together twenty years while the new hope emerges.

And then let’s say you manage to send your bright shining boys and girls to DC. What do you think will happen? I’ll tell you what will happen. What happens to republicans. Their offices will be penetrated, their information corrupted and they’ll become – at best – like the republicans. (At best, because remember what I said above about Libertarians who are with OWSers and the Tea Party and see no contradiction. They could flip on you.) More so because the dems will have taken over ALL the bureaucracy.

So, how is that different from the GOP?

The underlying truth is so important that it deserves to be stated in large type:

The dynamic of power operates wherever and whenever there is power to be had.

Beneath that truth lies another:

Power will always fall into the hands of persons who worship it and will sacrifice all else to get it.

And beneath that truth lies something the political elite would rather not have you think about:

Politics is the pursuit of power over others.

That should be enough large type for the moment. Ponder it while I fetch more coffee.

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Have you read this article?
How about this one?
Perhaps you recall this one?

If they seem repetitive, it’s because they focus on one of the most virulent of our sociopolitical infections: militant feminism. But beneath that focus lies a single, unvarying theme: the political perniciousness of collectivism, regardless of the motivation for it. “Don’t Be A Joiner!” I screamed, once again in large type.

Regardless of the aim of any political group, it is inherently collectivist. It subjects its members to a power structure, whether its decisions are made by consensus or by some subgroup of officials. Politics is the purest form of collectivism: the instance in which coercive force is made most overt. A political organization – i.e., one whose reason for being is to influence politics and government – is only infinitesimally less overt about its coercions.

Political parties are just as subject to the dynamic of power as any other sort of group. Indeed, the incentives are almost as strong as in government itself. Given time, they will fall into the hands of the very worst of their members: those who worship power and will do anything to get, keep, and enlarge it.

Such persons are completely indifferent to moral and ethical considerations. Need I elaborate on what follows from that?

Time was, it took a while – decades, at least – to thoroughly corrupt a political party. It happens much faster today, because of the far greater skill of contemporary propagandists and the far more powerful mechanisms at hand for the dissemination of propaganda. Robert A. Heinlein put it best in his novella “Gulf:”

Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.

Once you have committed yourself to a party, you have subordinated your goals and efforts to this dynamic. You could be sharp as a tack and relentless about informing yourself – indeed, you could be a Certified Galactic Intellect with a huge private library, unlimited time to read and research, and the eloquence of Demosthenes, Lincoln, Disraeli, and Churchill combined – and you would still find the dynamic to be more powerful than you.

One of the greatest tragedies of our time is that this truth, so fundamental and inexorable, has been absorbed by so few persons. It accounts for the waste of a terrible quantity of time, money, and effort by men of good will: a waste that increases with every passing day.

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My point is simple: If there is a solution to our politically generated problems, it lies outside politics.

The pseudonymous “John Galt” put it well in his book Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics As If Freedom Mattered:

1. Do not look to an entity that can grow only through greater immorality as a source of morality.
2. Do not look to an entity that can grow only through greater violence and plunder as a source of protection.
3. Do not look to an entity that can grow only by destroying liberty as a source of freedom.

You cannot internalize that wisdom without first shedding your preconception that political engagement will provide the solution to politically generated tyranny. Granted that this can be difficult, as such preconceptions are powerfully encouraged by our enveloping culture and coupled to many prevalent habits and institutions, it is both possible and utterly necessary. The penalty for not doing so is continued failure – failure that’s accompanied by ever-intensifying tyranny and suffering. (“People are usually willing to give up their preconceptions after they’ve had them tattooed on their heads with a blunt instrument.” -- Jame Retief)

You must get off the Mishnory road if you really want to be free.

Start today.

Yesterday’s Non-News

The powerful, utterly candid speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before a joint session of Congress dominates today’s headlines, and with good reason. The Israeli statesman caused many of us to wonder how long we must wait before America has a president of Netanyahu’s caliber. Reagan seems far distant in memory.

But that wasn’t all that happened yesterday. There was one other piddling item of note:

The House voted Tuesday to fund the Homeland Security Department through the end of the budget year, ending a protracted standoff that centered on objections to President Obama's controversial immigration actions.

The House voted 257-167 for the legislation, which includes no immigration provisions, and was carried over the finish line with mostly Democratic votes. In a statement late Tuesday, President Obama said he would sign the legislation as soon as it reached his desk....

The result is a victory for the Obama administration. Republicans had tried to use the DHS funding bill as the vehicle to reverse Obama's immigration executive actions. But Democrats repeatedly blocked the move, insisting they pass the spending bill with no riders attached.

House Speaker John Boehner, faced with diminishing options, earlier in the day told fellow Republican lawmakers he would drop the immigration demands.

"I am as outraged and frustrated as you at the lawless and unconstitutional actions of this president," Boehner told his caucus on Tuesday morning, according to a source.

But he said he believed the decision to vote on a "clean" bill, "considering where we are -- is the right one for this team, and the right one for this country."

Boehner's move could lead to a backlash in the party, especially since House GOP leaders repeatedly denied claims that he struck a deal with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi last week to hold such a vote.

So Boehner is “outraged and frustrated”...but he won’t stand his ground on the issue that, more than any other, is responsible for the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. He deems Obama’s actions “lawless and unconstitutional”...but the thought of a vote on impeachment refuses to enter his head. His move alienated two-thirds of the Republican House caucus...but it’s more important that the Democrats’ petulant minorities be placated than that he help his fellow Republicans hold true to their campaign pledges.

The Department of Homeland Security is largely a collection of desk-bound bureaucrats. Its most visible manifestation is the Transportation Security Authority (TSA), responsible for groping millions of air-travel passengers each year and confiscating no end of valuable property from them. It’s one of George W. Bush’s greatest mistakes, and one that has been used more than once to bludgeon conservatives into submission to left-liberal whims.

But the Democrats won’t permit the Senate to vote on an amnesty-free funding bill. Were such a vote to take place, the bill would go to Obama’s desk. He’d have to veto it explicitly, making it plain exactly who is responsible for the latest “government shutdown.” Can’t have that. The public might become aware of the Democrats’ real priorities.

Ace has had enough:

I'm personally done with this party.

In fact, I will vote for Democrats.

An old communist friend of mine voted for Bob Dole.

Why? Because this communist was convinced, inaccurately, as it would later turn out, that he would never see his dream of a communist USA via conventional politics, and therefore his hopes were pinned on outright revolution.

And as far as revolution, there are four words to remember: The worse, the better.

It is now clear that none of us will see the America we want via any kind of politics that includes the Republican Party. Ergo, they must be erased from the pages of history as quickly as possible, so that a better party can replace them.

So I'm now a Democrat. The worse, the better.

It may be time to begin supporting things like an increase in the minimum wage, too....

So has Misha:

And the news are ever depressing. Such as the bit about Weepy Boner and Mitch McCockless, once again, striking a deal with the Democrats to give Princess Obama everything she wants because… stuff…

Remember how they used to be “oh, we can’t shut down the government by refusing to pass a budget, but the DHS funding? Oh yes, we’re going to fight, fight FIGHT on that one. To the bitter end. For America!!!” That was ages ago, of course, all of four months or so.

Now it’s back to business as usual with the Quisling Party willingly, nay eagerly handing the Prozi Party and their Precious Princess everything they asked for, based on a deal that was struck long ago. You know. The usual deal the Quisling Party always strikes with the Prozi Party on any issue: “We’ll have to promise to fight, then pretend to fight a bit to keep the prole idiots who keep voting for us happy, but then we’ll cave. As predictably as a Texas summer.”

And so they did. The Quisling Party’s rich donors wanted cheap Messican slave labor, the American workers be damned, and that’s what the Quisling Party gave them.

We find ourselves pretty much in complete agreement with Ace.

The Quisling Party’s Billionaire Sugar Daddies got the cheap slave labor they wanted, thanks to the Quisling Party’s umpteenth and utterly predictable betrayal of the principles that they swore to before the election?

Why, all of a sudden His Imperial Majesty realizes that the Prozi Party has a point when it comes to, say, minimum wages.

And, I think, so have I.

---

If you missed this bit of reportage:

Before Obama’s promised “fundamental transformation” of America has been completed, this will no longer be an English-speaking nation populated mainly by people of European descent who cherish a heritage of individual liberty. It will be a Third World nation populated by people deliberately imported from the Third World in contravention of the law to displace us. Plans have been laid, and are already being executed:

Susan Payne is a contributor to WCBM, Baltimore and Co-Host of the Pat McDonough Radio Show.

Unbeknownst to the Obama officials, Ms. Payne was invited to listen in on conference calls at an immigration rally. Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and 16 members of the White House cabinet were on the first call. White House officials were on all three calls. What Ms. Payne learned needs to be immediately shared with Congress and the public.

The calls confirm that the melting pot is history. Our country is not evolving; the people running the government are methodically replacing it with a totally different country, which will be more to their liking ideologically and more suitable for authoritarian rule.

The “Task Force of New Americans” and the “Receiving Communities” are part of a plan by the Obama administration to develop a “country within a country” which will eventually form a new, and instantly fundamentally transformed United States.

The conference calls and meetings surrounding the task force made it clear Barack Obama is planning to legalize and protect 13 to 15 million illegal immigrants who will then be moved onto citizenship.

These millions are only the beginning. The more illegals are granted amnesty, the more will come. There are no serious plans to defend the border from invasion, or to enforce immigration law in a meaningful way.

When these “new Americans” come out of the shadows, the communities in which they’ve been placed will be designated as “receiving communities.”

The “new Americans” are considered “seedlings” by the White House and the “receiving communities” are the “fertile ground” to nurture them, according to comments made during the meetings. …

One member of the task force said they will be forming a “country within a country”. At the meetings, it was said that “immigrants need to be aware of benefits they are entitled to”.

The benefits they are supposedly entitled to will provide financial incentive for them to reproduce like rabbits.

As for assimilation…

The participants in the meeting also discussed the fact that these immigrants would not be interested in assimilating. They would “navigate not assimilate”.

Numbers this large would be impossible to assimilate anyway. This is invasion and colonization, not immigration.

...you might have been missing a key piece of the puzzle. I’ve written about exclaves before. You might be near enough to one to have a visceral sense for the dangers involved. Should the Obamunists proceed as the above citation predicts, they’re likely to become quite common...and politically very influential, perhaps to the extent of turning a few red states blue.

Tell me, Gentle Reader: Do you think the “amnesty” is about “compassion,” or about votes? The Democrats are so eager to facilitate this new invasion that it’s difficult to believe the motive is anything but purely partisan. More, the infrastructure – federal and state documentation, including Social Security numbers and drivers’ licenses – has been laid to allow these “new Americans” to vote, despite their not being naturalized citizens. Do you expect that the Democrats, given their opposition to voter ID laws and their Secretary of State project, will lift a finger to prevent it? Watch what they do, not what they say.

Yet the Republican leadership in Congress, though their co-partisans ran explicitly against this treason, refuses to stand firm against it. They’re more afraid of being blamed for a “government shutdown” by the media than they are of being revealed as liars and frauds. The conservative “backlash” this move will supposedly trigger troubles them not at all.

We’re about to lose the entire country.

---

I don’t know what we could possibly do about this avalanche of betrayals. The aggregate amounts to a de facto nullification of the Constitution and all its constraints. They who have sworn solemn oaths to abide by that document – the Supreme Law of the Land – have cheerfully cast their vows aside.

It’s impossible that this flows from any concept of the “common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Nor would it matter if it were so. At any rate, I can’t believe it.

Time was, the patriots in Congress would have done away with the Quislings, possibly right there in the Capitol building. Today the Quislings outnumber the patriots, and the latter group is either too feeble or too cowardly to put up more than token resistance. With a wholly lawless chief executive ready to take vengeance on anyone who dares try to thwart him, it’s understandable if not laudable.

Short of the chancy business of armed revolt, I can see no way out. The Republic has fallen. The combination of the amnesty, Democrat electoral skullduggery, and Republican spinelessness will bury it.

I’m out of ideas, Gentle Reader. Got any to spare?

What Freedom Is...And Isn’t

Michael Walsh has posted an interesting piece about the Left’s aversion to the late Robert A. Heinlein. It’s rather difficult to excerpt constructively, so I’ll simply exhort you to read it for yourself. My thoughts for the morning flow from the following comment to the piece:

Aargh! "Starship Troopers" is NOT "authoritarian"! Nor is the government depicted fascist. It explores the nature of duty and one way of trying to assure that the people who vote actually care about the nation. Every citizen in ST could vote, and every adult, regardless of race, sex, or economic status could become a citizen - if they cared enough to put in the service time required (and not just in the military, there were civilian jobs that qualified). One of Heinlein's subtle points was most people didn't want to!

I was reminded at once of Paul Verhoeven’s movie Starship Troopers, which, though colorful and entertaining, did violence to the book’s moral and political themes. But I was reminded even more strongly of two other works: Clarence Carson’s The American Tradition and Robert Nozick’s masterwork Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

Dr. Carson, an underappreciated writer and thinker, had some incisive things to say about one of the most pernicious fetishes of “democracy:” the “right” to vote:

[W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one's spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the "democratic process." A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.

Professor Nozick sharpened Dr. Carson’s point still further in what he called “The Tale of the Slave:”

• There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master's whims. He often is cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.
• The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulfilling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.
• The master has a group of slaves, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.
• The master allows his slaves four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.
• The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He requires only that they send back to him three-sevenths of their wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.
• The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what uses to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on.

Let us pause in this sequence of cases to take stock. If the master contracts this transfer of power so that he cannot withdraw it, you have a change of master. You now have 10,000 masters instead of just one; rather you have one 10,000-headed master. Perhaps the 10,000 even will be kindlier than the benevolent master in case 2. Still, they are your master. However, still more can be done. A kindly single master (as in case 2) might allow his slave(s) to speak up and try to persuade him to make a certain decision. The 10,000-headed monster can do this also.

• Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into the discussions of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers.
• In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselves to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.)
• They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome.

The “sting in the tale” is Nozick’s concluding question: At what point in this sequence is it no longer the tale of a slave?

Ponder that for a moment.

---

I wrote some time ago that there is no “right” to vote, that the vote itself is not an essential of freedom, and that certain conditions and qualifications should be imposed upon that privilege to render it less harmful to the Republic. That essay drew a lot of hostile commentary, mostly from persons who draw a check from the federal government and deem both that check and their “right” to vote as beyond morally legitimate criticism. Not all of them were idiots. Still, they were wrong then and they remain wrong today, for reasons Carson and Nozick make plain in the citations above.

Frederic Bastiat made the very same case in his 1850 pamphlet The Law:

A closer examination of the subject shows us the motive which causes the right of suffrage to be based upon the supposition of incapacity. The motive is that the elector or voter does not exercise this right for himself alone, but for everybody. The most extended elective system and the most restricted elective system are alike in this respect. They differ only in respect to what constitutes incapacity. It is not a difference of principle, but merely a difference of degree. If, as the republicans of our present-day Greek and Roman schools of thought pretend, the right of suffrage arrives with one's birth, it would be an injustice for adults to prevent women and children from voting. Why are they prevented? Because they are presumed to be incapable. And why is incapacity a motive for exclusion? Because it is not the voter alone who suffers the consequences of his vote; because each vote touches and affects everyone in the entire community; because the people in the community have a right to demand some safeguards concerning the acts upon which their welfare and existence depend.

I know what might be said in answer to this; what the objections might be. But this is not the place to exhaust a controversy of this nature. I wish merely to observe here that this controversy over universal suffrage (as well as most other political questions) which agitates, excites, and overthrows nations, would lose nearly all of its importance if the law had always been what it ought to be. In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder — is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?

Under these circumstances, is it likely that the extent of the right to vote would endanger that supreme good, the public peace? Is it likely that the excluded classes would refuse to peaceably await the coming of their right to vote? Is it likely that those who had the right to vote would jealously defend their privilege? If the law were confined to its proper functions, everyone's interest in the law would be the same. Is it not clear that, under these circumstances, those who voted could not inconvenience those who did not vote?

Bastiat was concerned with freedom. More, he was capable of distinguishing between a genuine right and a political privilege. Some years later, Louis Thiers said this about rights:

Either rights exist, or they do not exist. If they exist, they involve absolute consequences...Furthermore, if a right exists, it exists at every moment. It is absolute today, yesterday, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in summer as in winter, not when it pleases you to declare it in force.

Mind you, Thiers disagreed with Bastiat’s conception of genuine rights. That didn’t keep him from recognizing their nature.

---

Thomas Jefferson’s enumeration (in the Declaration of Independence) of our God-given rights flowed from a deeper conception: that of the individual as an autonomous being. He, and the many thinkers who preceded his formulation, realized that if rights exist, they cannot possibly contradict one another—that you cannot have a “right” that requires the abridgement of any “right” I possess. Your rights to your life, your liberty, and your property cannot and do not entitle you to infringe upon my rights to my life, my liberty, or my property. One who possesses those rights is wholly autonomous: i.e., he is both free to do as he wills (subject to the constraint that he not infringe upon others’ rights), and is responsible for the consequences of his decisions, actions, and inactions.

Quite a lot of persons recoil from this conception because of that trailing condition. (“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it!” – George Bernard Shaw) They demand to be “free” without the responsibilities that attach to freedom; they want others to shoulder the burdens they create. The obvious asymmetries and instabilities that arise from such a division of responsibility from freedom are much of what bedevils us today. Ralph Waldo Emerson was practically brutal on the subject:

The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem - how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual bright, etc. from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end....We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow.

Heinlein made it maximally explicit in Starship Troopers:

“Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority... other than through the tragic logic of history... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.”

Jefferson understood freedom – the rights to one’s life, liberty, and honestly acquired property – as a natural condition prior and superior to political organization. He understood politics and government not as goods to be pursued, but as unfortunate necessities to be confined within the cage of men’s God-given rights. Heinlein, though he allowed one of his teachers in History and Moral Philosophy to denigrate the Jeffersonian conception, grasped and adhered to it even so.

Carson, Nozick, Bastiat, Jefferson, and Heinlein had no trouble explaining to you why there is no “right” to vote -- and why you should be glad of it.

---

To sum up: You are free to the extent that your decisions, actions, and inactions are wholly at your discretion, rather than being constrained by punishment or the threat of punishment. Archibald MacLeish summed it up nicely:

What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.

Political freedom is merely freedom from punishment for one’s choices by a politically constituted body: a government. To distinguish it from absolute and unqualified freedom, we call it liberty.

There cannot be liberty without responsibility. The “right” to vote has nothing of liberty in it; as Heinlein notes, it is merely a delimited exertion of political authority. When you vote, you are not exercising any aspect of liberty; you are functioning as an agent of the political authority. In our “democracy,” in which the voter bears no direct responsibility for the consequences of his vote, for that brief instant in which you “pull the lever and feel the power,” you are functionally a master, if only an infinitesimal fraction of one.

When you pull back the curtain and leave the booth, you’re back to being wholly a slave.

Always bear that distinction in mind.

So it's not about "stimulus"?

This is why the Fed is so obsessed with creating inflation: because it renders these gargantuan debt loads more serviceable. In simplest terms, the Fed must “inflate or die.” It will willingly sacrifice the economy, and Americans’ quality of life in order to stop the bond bubble from popping.

This is also why the Fed happily talks about stocks all the time; it’s a great distraction from the real story: the fact that the bond bubble is the single largest bubble in history and that when it bursts entire countries will go bust.

This is why the Fed NEEDS interest rates to be as low as possible… any slight jump in rates means that the US will rapidly spiral towards bankruptcy. Indeed, every 1% increase in interest rates means between $150-$175 billion more in interest payments on US debt per year.^[1]

Hundreds of billions of dollars later the economic "recovery" is still anemic, saving is for suckers, stock market gains are anything but an indicator of health, further Fed inflation is apparently inescapable, youth unemployment is sky high, and low-skill third-worlders are being imported to compete with Americans for the diminished number of jobs that there are. This is the genius of the Obama administration for all to see.

Clearly, the Fed is in panic mode. A slight rise in the interest means more borrowing or taxation. How close are we to the saturation point on that? No one in power will admit that there's a systemic crisis developing. Tea Partiers seems to be at the root of all our problems.

Derivative markets exploding probably would harm some deserving speculators. I don't understand the ramifications of that at all. Maybe that would be a loss in some kind of "artificial" economy as Bemused Observer argues in the comments to the source article.

Savers are real enough and they've been driven into speculative stocks just to try to avoid the inroads of inflation. Pension funds are exposed because of ZIRP and consequent low return on investments in bonds. Kids go nowhere because government policy is about importing and coddling foreigners not creating or maintaining the fundamentals of a healthy economy. The unemployed are being hammered by competition from those foreigners and the rest of us suffer because of the presence of millions of unwanted foreigners who bring with them the pathologies of their home countries that impoverished them and otherwise degraded their lives. These don't strike me as interests that can be harmonized with smiles all round.

As I wrote recently, our country isn't being lifted up or protected. It's being sabotaged and mocked by a hostile government. Our own. And every other Western country is in the same boat.

Notes
^[1] "The $100 Trillion Reason the Fed is Terrified of Deflation." By Phoenix Capital Research, Zero Hedge, 3/01/15.

The failure of Democrat/black leadership.

H/t: Eagle Rising.

Once you factor out the possibility of decency and patriotism from Democrat policies, you arrive at the issue of control. The left impoverishes blacks to keep them subservient to the Democrat machine.

"Structural racism" and "Black lives matter" are just garbage invented to control blacks.

British (and Western) reality.

That the British have invaded practically every country in the entire world over just the last 200-300 years, and have not been invaded themselves since about William of Normandy, never seems to register. [jj]

What is really most often missed is that they have been invaded, British elites having taken pity on the wretched of the earth and invited them to accomplish demographically what they never could militarily. The spectacle of flamboyant racial self-abnegation accompanying the process obscures the fact that British living space has been invaded and that as long as that invasion carries on the ineluctable result is the erasure of British people from the earth. At this point this seems the most likely result, for as long as the issue remains unaddressed – even lowly Sweden, posterchild of loonie leftism, has demonstrated more resistance (albeit inchoate) to dispossession – the British can do naught but keep speeding manically towards the exit ramp of history. [ss]^[1]

As for who played a major role in bringing this about in Britain see here.

How is it that voters with free access to just about the sum total of all human knowledge – what knowledge, that is, that has survived after Muslims burned libraries, smashed observatories, and made obscurantism into a religious obligation – found it within themselves to pull the lever for such scum as Blair (see link) is beyond me.

Rapid takeover.

Can I say "scum"?

I rarely miss an opportunity to point out the massive, unopposed inflow of foreigners to Western nations is without historical precedent. In all previous centuries, a massive inflow of foreigners always, always, always involved a catastrophic failure of the armies or warriors of the nation or tribe. And the results were just that. Catastrophic.

Given that human nature has not changed in a million years, the leftist idea that a gradual takeover of the nation will be beneficial for the historic peoples thereof is simply delusional. But it is the reigning, operative, controlling, and mandatory view of virtually all Western governments.

Notes
^[1] Reply of silviosilver to comment of jimbojones at "They Really Did Start It." By Peter Frost, 2/21/15.

Foolish hobgoblin.

"Consistency has never been a mark of stupidity. If the diplomats who have mishandled our relations with Russia were merely stupid, they would have occasionally made a mistake in our favor."

~ James Forrestal, first U.S. Secretary of Defense.

At Gulag Bound.

Support the Troops? Tyranny & Standing Armies

[Cross-posted at The Backwoods Engineer.]

The Marine Corps has been incorporating elements from civilian firearm competition into their training:

They're working to emphasize modern marksmanship in fast-paced combat where civilians mingle with warfighters and Marines often must engage multiple moving targets in tight, urban settings. 

... includes shoot/no-shoot scenarios, photo-realistic targets, shot placement, and firing from long to short ranges as if closing with the enemy. It tests a Marine's ability to neutralize multiple exposed threats. 

... designed to incorporate more relevant combat skills into a "combat-centric" course of fire earlier in a Marine's training. 

... So far, the feedback has been positive. 

Because the [training] forces individual shooters to choose the best shooting position whether kneeling, prone, standing or sitting to engage targets at various distances, "It lets that individual Marine understand his range and what position he is effective in at that range," said Chief Warrant Officer 5 Vincent Kyzer, the 1st Marine Division gunner.

Upon the posting of this article on Facebook by a friend, and after reading it, I commented:

I think the military has a lot to learn from civilian practical shooting competitions. In many ways, we civvies have outpaced them, and Constitutionally, that is very good.

My friend had a series of questions on my comments.  I will designate his questions with "Q:", and my answers with "Backwoods:".

Q: "Constitutionally, that is very good" ?

Backwoods: Yes, so argued the Founders.  The people themselves were intended to be armed, trained ("well-regulated"), and useful in ad-hoc armies that the Founders called "the militia".  The Founders did not like the idea of large professional armies; they viewed them as supporting tyranny, and believed the people themselves should be better armed and trained than any regular army:

Tench Coxe:

The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unnecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them.

Noah Webster:

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.

Boston: DHS gunman
targets civilians

Backwoods: Despite the grave danger the Founders foresaw in standing armies, they are now everywhere in America, in every state capitol, and in every city small and large. The strength, in arms and number of men, of the police forces and domestically-barracked troops would have horrified the Founders.  Webster's supposition is now completely turned on its head in most of America, especially in the large disarmed cities in so-called "blue" states: regular troops (military and police) are now better armed and more numerous than the general militia (the armed public).

Q: So a weak military is good for the Republic?

Backwoods: Weak internally, yes. So the Founders argued.

Q: What's the difference between internal weakness and external weakness?

Backwoods:   The US military was originally conceived as an outward-facing organization, focused on the defense of the US, or the neutralizing of imminent external, national-level threats.    It was never supposed to do the job of the militia.

Recall the story about Jefferson sending the Marines to Tripoli to neutralize the threat of the Islamists who were attacking US-flagged ships on the high seas .(Sound familiar?  They're back!)  That's an example of the original intent.

I support a strong US military--strongly defending the borders of the US and her citizens abroad.  (We don't defend our borders anymore.)  In keeping with the Founders militia ideal, I do not support a large military; their concept was a small-core military that in time of war would require the President federalizing individual militia units-- National Guard units for example-- to supplement their numbers and capabilities for a specific conflict.  For each conflict the commanders should, ideally, have a well-defined victory in view.

The military was not supposed to act on the American people themselves; to have them do so is a prelude to tyranny. The Founders knew it, but we ignored their warnings, to our peril. NorthCom, a US military command designed to operate primarily in the US homeland, would be viewed by them as an abomination, as would be the modern tank-running, jackbooted, SWATized police forces.

If you read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, you'll see the militia discussed throughout.  Their concept was the raising of temporary armies from a well-armed people, for specific purposes, such as the apprehension of dangerous criminals or gangs of criminals, the suppressing of insurrections, and other internal threats, including (by Constitutional sanction) the defense of a State's border with another country during an imminent threat of invasion that the Federals cannot immediately respond to. (You know, like Texas being invaded by drug lords on and off for the last thirty years.).

Ever watch and old Western movie and hear talk of "raising a posse?"  That's the militia. Those people might have been paid for that temporary duty, but they were supposed to already have weapons and ammunition on hand.   They're supposed to be trained in the use of arms, and in small-unit tactics, too.  (This used to be taught to the men of the general population.) You can't raise an army from among the people or resist tyranny if they are mostly a bunch of disarmed sheep; that's what the 2nd Amendment is all about.

These militia armies were to do a specific duty, then return to their lives as civilians.  They weren't to be professional soldiers like many of the police forces now are, because a professional soldier who gets used to projecting State-sanctioned force will eventually be asked impose the will of the State on citizens, a good working definition of tyranny.

And it has happened here already.  Some examples that come to mind are the Boston Lockdown of 2013, the FBI and ATF at Waco and Ruby Ridge, The Battle Of Athens TN, The Bonus Army, and the various Indian relocations, including the Cherokee Trail of Tears.

The resurgence in gun ownership, interest in the gun as an instrument of liberty, and a new emphasis in training and competition with firearms are all very encouraging indicators of potential for freedom in this Republic.  I think modern IPSC, USPSA, and 3-gun competitors would do very well on militia duty, especially those familiar with rifles.

Yes, government tyranny is encroaching in many areas of American life, but we are the only country in the world that has over 100 million armed citizens.   That counts for a lot.

Knowings Part 2: Suspicious Bulges

Persons who carry a handgun in their daily travels will sometimes be heard to comment on the difficulty of concealing it completely. It’s a formidable problem, for good clothing that fits properly will often suggest the presence of the gun via a “bulge” that’s visible to an onlooker. In several jurisdictions that prohibit open carry, police have been authorized to detain on the basis of such “suspicious bulges” and to arrest the detainee should he prove to be armed, regardless of whether he has a concealed-carry permit. The logic, of course, is that the gun isn’t completely concealed – that the bulge gives it away, thus creating a prima facie violation of the law.

To a Second Amendment absolutist – for the record, that includes your humble blogmeister – that’s quite bad enough. What makes it worse is the presumption involved, which is wrapped up in the doctrine of “reasonable suspicion.” The Fourth Amendment apparently doesn’t protect those of us who’ve had such bulges conferred upon us by diet or genetics.

To permit the police to infer a crime based on a suspicious bulge probably strikes some as reasonable enough. Indeed, it can be a tough thing to argue against...but I don’t take the easy cases. At any rate, today’s tirade isn’t about the infringement of Second Amendment rights because of such bulges. It’s about a bulge in plain sight that ought to have the entire nation locked, loaded, and storming Washington.

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For quite some time, I and other commentators have discussed the thresholds for an open revolution against the regime. Some have drawn the line at the destruction of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Others have insisted that our Second Amendment rights are the last bastion – that once we’ve been reaved of our guns, our ability to resist tyranny will be gone, so a move in that direction should trigger revolt. A few have focused on the possible abrogation of an electoral outcome, as if vote fraud were irrelevant to the issue, or the outcome of an election has changed anything substantive this century past.

Well, Gentle Reader, in case you’ve been paying insufficient attention to the news, we’ve just had a quinella:

1. The Federal Communications Commission has just claimed wholly unConstitutional powers over the Internet, imposing a 300-page-plus book of regulations upon ISPs that no one outside the federal government has yet seen.
2. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, another wholly unConstitutional agency, has declared its intention to ban 5.56 NATO / .223 Remington rifle ammunition as “armor piercing,” despite the plain fact that that round does not meet the legal definition of armor-piercing ammunition.

What are the implications of those actions? What further measures against Americans’ rights to free expression and the possession of arms seem likely to follow?

Is that enough of a suspicious bulge for you? Combine it with the nationwide militarization of local police forces, Obama’s open obstruction of the enforcement of the immigration laws, and the vote fraud that was rampant in the 2012 elections. What verdict pops out of the slot?

Are we being reduced to helpless subjugation or not?

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I’m growing tired. I’ve been writing op-ed for the Web since 1997, nearly always to the same effect: that America as it was designed – “conceived in liberty,” as the classic phrase goes – is being reduced to tyranny. Hundreds of other commentators have been shouting the same warning. Yet nothing has changed for the better. No effective resistance to our ongoing subjugation has been mounted. The closest we’ve come have been the popular resistance to the seizure of Cliven Bundy’s ranch and the Oath Keepers’ defense of legitimate Ferguson, Missouri businesses against looters and rioters.

Now we’re looking down the barrel of the State’s gun: the removal of the last wholly free means of expression and organization remaining to private citizens, plus the ongoing destruction of our potential means of resistance.

In the name of God, people, when will it be enough?

It’s no longer sufficient to protest. Those who hold the levers of power have decided that they can ignore our voices. Worse, we can’t even mobilize ourselves for effective resistance. There’s no point in standing on a street corner and crying out a warning if those who hear are unwilling to act.

Some say we need a leader that has not yet arisen. Others demur that we’re too comfortable – that the spirit of liberty has been enervated by prosperity. There’s some justice to both assessments, but a third is uppermost on my mind this morning: that we’ve become cowards, none of us willing to risk our own lives and possessions, all of us happy to “let you and him fight.”

Mind you, I don’t exempt myself.

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Just yesterday, I wrote about the difference between facts and inferences as categories of knowledge. It might have been too abstruse to capture your interest. All the same, it’s an important subject, directly relevant to the situation we face today.

Abraham Lincoln once spoke thus:

"When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen...and when we see those timbers joined together, and see that they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few...in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that...all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck."— Abraham Lincoln, deducing from objective evidence the blueprint of a political plot to save the institution of slavery. [Quoted in Garet Garrett's essay "The Revolution Was"]

Lincoln’s concern was the ongoing enslavement of tens of thousands of American Negroes. He was willing to start a war that divided the nation and ultimately claimed 800,000 American lives to put an end to the practice. It hardly matters whether other means to bring an end to slavery were available, for the greater part of the nation deemed the price acceptable.

What about the enslavement of 300,000,000 Americans? What price are we willing to pay to prevent that?

The process has been in train for more than a century. Its completion, as implied by the assaults on the Internet and our firearms rights, looms before us. Could any bulge in the Omnipotent State’s garb be more suspicious?

Patrick Henry warned us against “the illusions of hope:”

"Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to treaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation.

"There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free; if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending; if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained; we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

We, too, have tried argument.
We have also tried electoral measures.
We have tried everything except open revolt.
What, then, must we do?

I await your thoughts.

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I’m scheduled for more oral surgery today, so please excuse me if I’m unable to write for a day or two. Of course, if I’m “unable” to write for some other reason, I exhort you to become outraged...if nothing else.

Indecent designs.

One of the lessons of the last century is that civilian disarmament is the harbinger of indecent designs on the peoples’ liberty.

Robert Pinkerton comment on "Oppression Instead of Admission, Part IV." By Takuan Seiyo, Gates of Vienna, 2/23/15.

The dernier cri on "Islamism."

There is no Islam which will openly distinguish itself from Islamism by renouncing Jihad. None. There never has been. And I believe there never will be.^[1]

As that toad in Turkey aptly observed, there is no moderate Islam, only Islam. By the same token (BTST), there is no extremist Islam, only Islam. 1,400 years of conquest, slavery, subjection, murder, and intellectual output that would fit in the trunk of my car. The perfect closed system as Baron Bodissey has put it.

School is out.

Notes
^[1] Comment by Joe the Gentile on "The Problem with Countering Violent Extremism." By Daniel Greenfield, 2/25/15.

A Change for the Better

One legislative change that I’d like to see pushed through Congress – SOON – is to retirement benefits for Federal employees who violate the law.

They should lose ALL pension and insurance rights forever.

The money they contributed should be returned to them, with nominal interest, in full.  The Federal portion should be untouchable by them or their beneficiaries.

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